Potting sheds can help to teach our children

Learning in the tool shed

SIR – It was fascinating to read about Sir Jonathan Ive, the designer behind some of Apple’s most famous products, including the iPod and iMac, first becoming interested in design as a result of his father making furniture and silverware in a home workshop (Features, May 23).

I seem to recall that the careers of Trevor Baylis, the inventor of the clockwork radio, Nick Park, the animator who created Wallace and Gromit, Dame Ellen MacArthur, the record-breaking sailor, and Sir James Dyson, the inventor and businessman, were all influenced by tinkering with tools in parental garages, attics or workshops.

If we are to revive Britain’s industrial and manufacturing base perhaps it would help if children were brought up in a house with a garden shed, a set of tools and a parent who can provide instruction.

Mark Shephard St Albans, Hertfordshire

SIR – It is instructive to note the aspects of “British education” Sir Jonathan Ive credits with guiding his career: supportive parents, good teachers and integrated design courses at a polytechnic. In common with many successful entrepreneurs in technology-related businesses, his career seems not to have been founded on weekly or biweekly IT courses at primary school, nor on a university education.